Four People Who Had Gwen Cooper
by Mr. Peabody Hawke
Summary: Four People Who Had Gwen Cooper And One Who Didn't . Written for the First Annual Everybody Loves Gwen Cooper Day, December 10th, 2007.


Written for the First Annual Everybody Loves Gwen Cooper Day, December 10th, 2007. Yes, I am posting it three years later. You may have seen this on my LJ already; I hope only that you still find it amusing.

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**Four People Who Had Gwen Cooper (And One Who Didn't)**

Owen picks her up from the bus stop. She's there under the pretense of taking the bus to work like she always does, and he picks her up, like he always does. And, like always, they don't go straight to work, but pull into a vacant parking lot between a derelict warehouse and a rather sad-looking spot of woods. Owen doesn't bother to cut the engine, just climbs over the seats and Gwen follows, and they do it like they always do in the back seat of a van with blacked-out windows at seven-thirty in the morning.

And then, without a word of discussion, he drops her off two blocks from the Plass, and she walks the rest of the way and goes in the front entrance while Owen drives round to the garage. They do this every day, as though it somehow matters when everyone they work with already knows about them anyway. It seems to be more the principle of the thing.

-----

She and Toshiko go out for lunch.

"Look," Gwen says, after the forcibly pleasant conversation dies into awkward silence for the fifth time, "I'm sorry about..." She's forgotten the name.

"Mary," Tosh supplies, pushing a pea around with her fork.

"Right, Mary. Um, d'you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," says Tosh curtly, "I've never been lucky in love."

Gwen thinks there is a barb here meant for her, though she's not quite sure why. "Sorry," she says anyway. Tosh's eyes flick to her and Gwen sees regret in them, but nothing more. She hesitates before asking gently, "Was it special?"

"It wasn't real," says Tosh, "It never is." And then her face crumbles.

Gwen takes her to the ladies' room to get cleaned up.

"I'm sorry," Tosh says between hiccups while Gwen dabs at her eyeliner with a wet paper towel.

"Shh, it's alright. It helps to talk about these things."

Tosh chokes on a sob and a laugh at the same time. "God. All that, and you know where I feel most betrayed? I feel betrayed that that was the best damn sex in my life!"

Gwen stops with the towel halfway to Tosh's face, but Tosh isn't paying attention. She's laughing wryly, like it hurts. "You've got no idea, Gwen."

Gwen's mind flashes back to that first day on the job, being in the cell with Carys and ripping her shirt open.

"Oh," she says.

She decides it's a maneuver that maybe merits a second try, and this time the results are much more satisfactory.

-----

"Ianto," she says, catching a breather on the balcony when he brings her some coffee, "D'you ever... feel like it's just more than we should be able to handle? All that we go through, not telling anyone?"

He looks at her as though she's just asked him if he could take the coffee back and get her some of that instant stuff that comes in a packet. "That's why it's better not to have any ties, any relationships."

"But don't you wish that you could just tell _someone_?"

He shrugs, says nothing.

"I see us," Gwen says, "I see us... breaking down, like this, not able to confide in anyone but each other. We're just five people, Ianto. That's not enough of a world for anyone. Your whole life can't be five people."

"What we have will just have to be enough."

"It shouldn't have to be. There're six billion people on this planet, and we're not giving them enough credit if we think that not one of them can handle it."

"Lisa would have said that, once," he says, face carefully blank, more carefully than usual; so carefully blank that Gwen realizes the grief is still strong inside him, though he's never shown it since that day. It's still strong, strong enough that maybe it's eating him from the inside out because he's too afraid to show it.

"You remind me of her. You're strong, and you're smart, and you never give up if you think you can save someone, no matter the cost to yourself, no matter what Jack or anyone else says." There's a slight crease in his brow, and his voice wavers just a little.

She kisses him gently, hands holding his head like he's the most fragile thing in the world, and he lets her, desperate but holding back. She pulls away and gives him a small smile.

"Is this what Jack does?" she whispers, so softly that it almost hasn't been spoken, it's almost just her mouth forming the shapes. Ianto's nod is just as quiet, the incline of his head barely noticeable. It's little more than the muscles tensing beneath her hands.

"Does it help?" she asks, and when he nods again they find one of the unused storage rooms and things proceed from there.

They leave the lights on, because the dark doesn't feel as safe as it used to.

-----

He's watching her with that smile of his when she enters his office.

"You been enjoying yourself, Gwen Cooper?" he asks, and she understands instantly that he knows exactly what's been going on. She wonders if there are even more security cameras he's got set up than she was aware of, or if he just knows. She's not sure which possibility is more unsettling.

"Not jealous, are you, Captain?" she responds, and she's only half teasing.

He grins that rare grin, the one that looks somehow like it belongs a lifetime ago, before Something Happened, and makes her wish she could have known him then. He might have been a different person then, before he learned to kill people and think so little of it. "I don't believe in jealousy. Sharing is caring!" The smile is a little more serious when he says, "Besides, it looks like you're giving people something they need."

She takes a step closer, looks at him carefully. "What do _you _need, Jack?"

The grin fades as looks at her; the shoulders go back, he sits up straighter, he looks at his desk. "I need to finish this paperwork," he says, and raises his pen.

"Jack," she says firmly, "What do you _need_?"

He puts the pen down; sighs. "I need a Doctor," he says, not to her. She can hear the specificity in the word though she knows not what it means.

There's a long silence, and then she says it. "Will a beat cop do?"

He doesn't even bother to look surprised. He gets up from the desk and walks around toward her; cups her face with one hand.

She's surprised by how gentle he is, and how it seems to be for his own sake rather than for her.

----

Rhys is already in bed by the time she gets home. He hasn't called her cell phone asking why she's so late. He hasn't bothered in weeks. He's pretending to be asleep, but he gives up when she climbs under the covers and drops him a peck on the cheek. "Hullo," he says, rolling over and smiling. "How was work?"

Gwen opens her mouth to tell him, to tell him how dangerous it is, how scary, how thrilling, how fascinating, how important it is to know that they're protecting people, how humbling it is to see how weak and stupid our planet really is. But she can't, and even if she did he wouldn't understand at all.

"It was fine," she says, and then she pulls the blanket up over her ears and stares at the darkness for a long time.


End file.
